


Like Real People Do

by Interrobang



Category: Original Work
Genre: Big Family Weddings, F/F, Selkies, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 03:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18865009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobang/pseuds/Interrobang
Summary: Werewolf Naomi is marrying Selkie royalty Rue. Naomi's younger sister does everything in her power to make sure it goes off without a hitch.





	Like Real People Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lepetitselkie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lepetitselkie/gifts).



> This was written as a commission last year and updated for a compilation, and I hold it very dear to my heart. The art for this was in fact done by the very same person that paid me to write it. I have a big family of OC Jewish werewolves based on the people around me, and I am just in love with the idea of a big Jewish werewolf wedding. So I wrote it!
> 
> Art by LePetitSelkie.

Leah grinned with satisfaction as she looked out at the back yard. It was done up in the highest order, more dressed up than on any other family occasion she could remember. Every pack member had turned out to help—  and some of the neighbors, too— just to make sure that Naomi and Rue’s wedding would be perfect. Dad had organized the catering, assuring Naomi that only the best was fit for his little girl. Her brother and sister, Rachel and Caleb, had rearranged the yard furniture and swept the patio. Rebekah, a burgeoning seamstress, had sewn the dresses. The rest of the family had picked flowers and made party favors and fussed over the brides as much as humanly — inhumanly?  — possible.

Leah, as Naomi’s youngest sister, had been designated Assistant to the Alpha. All this really meant was that she followed her mom around and made sure that Rue’s family was comfortable. They were staying out in the back of the property, in the little cabins and tents they kept at the lake’s edge for the deep summer weekends. There weren’t a lot of amenities out there, but Leah had been surprised: for all of Rue’s embarrassed insistence that her family could be a little stuck-up, they seemed perfectly happy just to sun themselves on the soft river-sand banks while the venue was being set up.

The selkies had arrived a week before the wedding, showing up very dramatically on a foggy evening with heavy trunks held in their arms and their fur coats dragging on the ground behind them. There had been no visible transport, the seal-people appearing to have simply walked out of the mist and up to the front gate.

Mama Jacobson had taken it all in stride, of course. She’d been Alpha long enough that not much fazed her, and if it did, she hid it well. She had simply called all her children down to help carry luggage into the accommodations and then invited the new in-laws over for dinner.

Leah had to laugh; watching Irish selkies try to keep up with American Jewish werewolf Shabbat dinner was a hoot. A big, confusing riot of old languages and an argument about cabbage’s place on the table, along with plenty of wine and beer, and suddenly it was as if there had never been any disagreements. The selkies left their coats in the spare bedroom, bread was broken, and suddenly the house was full to bursting with company and love.

There were the usual jokes, of course. Plenty of people ribbed Rue about how much fur she and Naomi would have to vacuum in their new house. Rue was a short girl, round around the middle with arms good for hugging, and she made a beautiful picture at Naomi’s lanky side. Naomi was tall for a wolf, with her dad’s height and mom’s curls, and when transformed her auburn fur matched the hue of Rue’s umber skin.

The week leading up to the wedding was one long bout of fussing and laughter. The brides, as a last bastion of tradition, had been separated all week. Despite living together for over a year, Rue and Naomi were now given messengers in the form of younger cousins to ferry messages and tokens back and forth. Sometimes it was cute: letters, flowers, a bagel from the breakfast table. Sometimes it was more frustrating: asking where Rue had placed Naomi’s hair brush, or arguing via messenger about who would lift whose veil first.

But they spent the week in their respective families’ territories, swaddled in love and smothered with attention, missing each other all the while.

Their contrasts were made especially gorgeous now, Leah thought. Mid-morning on a Saturday, and the yard was full. The selkies had traded their coats for more formal attire, suits and dresses and lace and wraps and headwear all around to out-class every other guest. This, Leah supposed, was to be expected from foreign semi-royalty. But the Jacobson pack wasn’t to be outdone—  they had all groomed their fur impeccably and worn their best clothes, and their teeth and nails were polished to a high shine.

The sun shone in a rising arc in the sky, dissipating any remaining fall fog as the morning wore on. By the time the ceremony was over and they could move on to the reception, the day would be hot enough that they would be grateful they had the lake on the property to jump into. September weddings were no joke: humid mornings, hot afternoons, mosquito-swarmed evenings. But today they would all be brave for the sake of love.

Someone’s cousin played a dulcimer while the crowd fell silent. In the middle, at the head of the yard, the chuppa waited. Chuppas were meant to be a representation of the future couple’s home, and the two women had built theirs with meaning. The canopy was woven with flowers and branches from the greenery around the house, along with driftwood to give it structure; seashells and river rocks were incorporated throughout it, with strands of colored glass and chimes dangling down to sing in the light summer breeze that blew through the venue. It looked like art. It looked like everything the two women had ever shared.

Leah sat eagerly in her chair at the front of the yard, camera in hand. There was a professional photographer around here somewhere—  probably taking pictures of the brides right before they walked out. Each woman was in a separate tent to either side of the central clearing. Leah could see the shadows of her alpha mother arranging and pinning and smoothing Naomi on one side. On the other the tent rustled with the whispers and song of a selkie queen sending her daughter off to land.

When at last the procession started, the two tents on either side of the venue were opened, and the two brides emerged, glowing with happiness and nerves. The crowd audibly gasped in collective joy as the brides came into view. Naomi walked from the right, heels almost catching on the runway: her hair was pinned and curled, with flowers throughout. Her dress flowed with lace and tiny winking bits of glass. Her mother and father held her on either side, arms linked with hers. From the left, Rue walked regally down her carpet, wrapped in her sealskin with strands of pearls and seaglass woven around her hands and neck. Her mother accompanied her with a hand on the small of her back to guide her. The buzz of attention seemed palpable in its silence as the two women walked to the dais, settled under the canopy of the chuppah, and turned to face each other.

A nervous smile here, a twitch of tooth there: they found the humor in the situation. Being separated all week had truly made this moment special, reminding them just how much they missed and loved each other. Seeing each other like this—  dressed in splendor, seen for the first time in a week— reinforced what a good decision this was.

They’d decided on a rabbi between the two of them, though the wedding itself was a blend of traditions. There would be a ketubah made up later—  a beautiful artwork showing their vows and commitment— to be hung up above their bed in their home. They had decided to work Celtic knots and images of seals into the border, to truly blend their cultures into one. It was unconventional, to say the least. But it was them. It was so perfectly them.

But now—  now the rabbi stepped up, opened his book, and began the ceremony. Leah could see from her vantage point in the front row that Naomi had tears in her eyes from the get-go. Her hands looked like they itched to hold her partner’s, but she was holding back on behalf of decorum.

Before she knew it, Leah was standing with the rest of the crowd while the two women kissed as a married couple for the first time—  and then a riotous cacophony of whooping, cheering, howling, and barking erupted, so loud that the sound of the glass being crushed underfoot was like a drop in a bucket. Cries of “Mazel tov!” and “Congratulations!” echoed through the yard, into the woods, and up into the sky as the couple marched down the aisle towards the wooded area where the reception was being held.

 

 

The family had opted to host the reception along the lake, near the campgrounds the selkie clan were staying at. Leah had helped, of course, but the bulk of the work had been done by her dad and some cousins, who all helped cook, carry food out, and decorate. There were tables and chairs, a bare dirt dance floor, and so many instruments set out that it seemed nearly everybody on hand would have something to play. So many people had volunteered to play during and after the ceremony that it had seemed like Naomi and Rue would have a soundtrack to their entire existence as a married couple.

But first… they had to have their first dance. The two stepped around on the bare earth dance floor with ease as their song of choice played, ending with a tender kiss as the last phrase—   _we should just kiss like real people do_ —  played on.

There was cake, and dinner, of course. And so much dancing that it seemed like the night would never end, with group after group coming up to play a jig or lift the couple up in chairs. Dancing and dinner went on long after the sun had gone down and the lamps were lit. After all, the wolves ran under the moon all the time.

And when the selkies donned their skins and slipped into the lake, the party went wild. Wolves stripped off their formal wear and changed into fur, diving with gusto into the freezing lake. Even Leah joined them.

In the end, only Naomi and Rue were left on shore in their dresses, heels kicked off into the mud, sharing the last slice of cake and holding hands. It was everything they could have asked for.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> To find out more about what I'm up to these days, follow on Twitter @GoInterrobang or on Tumblr @hhgggx.


End file.
